Speech discrimination scores of postlingually deaf cochlear-implanted patients

The aim of this study was to measure the speech discrimination performance of postlingually deaf patients using the Combi 40/40+ cochlear implant (Med -El, Innsbruck). The speech perception performance of 37 adults was tested over a time span of three years. We used a standardised test battery compri sing number, monosyllable, sentence, consonant and vowel discrimination tes ts. Testing was performed immediately after initial fitting and 1, 3, 5, 12 , 24, and 36 months thereafter. The average correct answers for all tests w ere as follows: right after the implantation 29.1%, after 1 month 46.7 %,af ter 3 months 53.9% after 1 year 63.5% and after 3 years 68.5%. Some patient s reached a number discrimination rate of 100%. The discrimination for mono syllables averaged 41.1% two years after implantation. The results demonstr ated continuous improvement of speech perception, even after three years fo llowing implantation.